“Actually, it might have been Woody, so maybe forget it for now.” I remembered the boy who spoke to me the next morning, so much younger than his years.
“It was Woody. I have no memory of you arriving, but I knew there’d be someone coming to stay. I wasn't present that day, so, I can't say for certain, but I think my daddy had told him he was getting a life-size doll to play with. That's what I guessed based on his scribbles in the journal. It may be better for you to read it.”
“You keep a diary, too?”
“Yeah. . . we have an agreement to document our day—it helps us keep track of each other. But the other two break the rules sometimes. They are selective with what they write. . . but anything is a help. I get like a dissociative amnesia, of some sort, and I black out when they take over.” He stopped talking, eyes closing. A shield. He was shielding himself.
“You don’t have to feel embarrassment.”
“I don’t,” he confirmed. “Not with you. It’s just not something I’ve ever talked about, so I guess maybe I’ve never fully faced it.”
I shifted closer, into his arms.
“The other two,” he began. “Other two. . . I can only imagine how that sounds.” The embarrassment he apparently didn’t feel was creeping in. “I need help. I don’t know how you can look at me without judgement. But I love that you do. I feel warmth and kindness and compassion. Things I've rarely been shown by anyone else.”
“You deserve to feel all the love in the world.”
“Hopefully one day.”
“How are things with your parents now?”
I shouldn’t have asked. I’d witnessed the truth. They barely acknowledged him without stern words and agitation. It wasn’t just Ville. Wynter was even worse. Her warmth had thawed over the last few weeks. She was no longer harboring a smile—that was so obviously false—when speaking to or of her son. Nope, she was as icy as her namesake.
I still liked her. Appreciated everything she’d done for me. But something about her, now made my blood run cold. Maybe it was the discomfort I felt when she looked down upon her son, each and every time he pretended not to notice.
“Not all parents are as nice as yours was.”
His words caught me off guard, my gaze immediately flicking to his. “I wish he was still here. I wasn’t ready to give him up,” I spoke of my dad, his memory causing me pain.
“I know. I hear you talking to him at night. Sometimes, my throat gets dry, and if I nip to the bathroom for some water, I hear you talking in your room after Nessie falls asleep. I always assumed it was to your father.”
“Oh. . . you hear that. That isn’t to my dad. Not really. Since he’s been gone, I daydream a lot, and I whisper along with them. I guess, in a way, I am talking to him because he’s still alive in my head.”
“And your heart, and he always will be.”
I didn’t do anything more than nod.
“Tell me about your daydreams, which you seem to do mostly at night.”
“It’s not like a regular daydream, and you’re right, it isn’t limited to the day.” I paused, wondering if hethought I was nuts. But he never would. “It takes over; I get depressed if interrupted. I talk. I have movements. It’s vivid and controlling. It feels—”
“Dissociative.” He recognized similarities in our differences in handling trauma.
His smile spread to my lips, and I nodded again. “He wouldn’t want you to be sad. He wouldn’t want you to live in your head. He’d want you to see the world. To experience reality.”
“I have been. This week. Thank you for that. Your parents are missing out on an amazing person by not being closer with you. And you feel all the loss, but it should be them. It should be theirs.”
“They have no interest in me. My issues strain our relationship, apparently. Though, it’s always been that way. Strained.”
“You deserve help.”
“I know I do, but they'll never give it. My mother feels nothing but resentment for me. For my father, the novelty of a son wore off quite some time ago. I need a diagnosis, I know that. And my father could possibly give me that.” He blinked his eyes twice, confirming. “I need support on how to handle all that’s wrong with me. But I won’t get any of that. My father thinks my issues will come in handy if I go into business with him. But I couldn’t risk a switch at a workplace.”
“How would they come in handy?”
“No idea. He has a plan in motion to control them, apparently. But he hasn’t told me what, probably because it doesn’t exist, and he just wants me to agree. I don’t even know what it is he does, but I know I want something different. He has connections to dangerous people, and I don’t want to be involved with them.” Woodrow’s palms became sweaty on my skin. “I can’t think about him right now.”
“Are you okay?”
